OpenRaiser/Intern-Atlas huggingface dataset:
Panoramic Depth Estimation via Supervised and Unsupervised Learning in Indoor Scenes
Venue: arXiv cs.CV 2021
Year: 2021

Depth estimation, as a necessary clue to convert 2D images into the 3D space, has been applied in many machine vision areas. However, to achieve an entire surrounding 360-degree geometric sensing, traditional stereo matching algorithms for depth estimation are limited due to large noise, low accuracy, and strict requirements for multi-camera calibration. In this work, for a unified surrounding perception, we introduce panoramic images to obtain larger field of view. We extend PADENet first appeared in our previous conference work for outdoor scene understanding, to perform panoramic monocular depth estimation with a focus for indoor scenes. At the same time, we improve the training process of the neural network adapted to the characteristics of panoramic images. In addition, we fuse traditional stereo matching algorithm with deep learning methods and further improve the accuracy of depth predictions. With a comprehensive variety of experiments, this research demonstrates the effectiveness of our schemes aiming for indoor scene perception.
Combining Local and Global Viewpoint Planning for Fruit Coverage
Venue: arXiv cs.RO 2021
Year: 2021

Obtaining 3D sensor data of complete plants or plant parts (e.g., the crop or fruit) is difficult due to their complex structure and a high degree of occlusion. However, especially for the estimation of the position and size of fruits, it is necessary to avoid occlusions as much as possible and acquire sensor information of the relevant parts. Global viewpoint planners exist that suggest a series of viewpoints to cover the regions of interest up to a certain degree, but they usually prioritize global coverage and do not emphasize the avoidance of local occlusions. On the other hand, there are approaches that aim at avoiding local occlusions, but they cannot be used in larger environments since they only reach a local maximum of coverage. In this paper, we therefore propose to combine a local, gradient-based method with global viewpoint planning to enable local occlusion avoidance while still being able to cover large areas. Our simulated experiments with a robotic arm equipped with a camera array as well as an RGB-D camera show that this combination leads to a significantly increased coverage of the regions of interest compared to just applying global coverage planning.
Deployment of Deep Neural Networks for Object Detection on Edge AI Devices with Runtime Optimization
Venue: arXiv cs.CV 2021
Year: 2021

Deep neural networks have proven increasingly important for automotive scene understanding with new algorithms offering constant improvements of the detection performance. However, there is little emphasis on experiences and needs for deployment in embedded environments. We therefore perform a case study of the deployment of two representative object detection networks on an edge AI platform. In particular, we consider RetinaNet for image-based 2D object detection and PointPillars for LiDAR-based 3D object detection. We describe the modifications necessary to convert the algorithms from a PyTorch training environment to the deployment environment taking into account the available tools. We evaluate the runtime of the deployed DNN using two different libraries, TensorRT and TorchScript. In our experiments, we observe slight advantages of TensorRT for convolutional layers and TorchScript for fully connected layers. We also study the trade-off between runtime and performance, when selecting an optimized setup for deployment, and observe that quantization significantly reduces the runtime while having only little impact on the detection performance.
Masked Face Recognition Challenge: The InsightFace Track Report
Venue: arXiv cs.CV 2021
Year: 2021

During the COVID-19 coronavirus epidemic, almost everyone wears a facial mask, which poses a huge challenge to deep face recognition. In this workshop, we organize Masked Face Recognition (MFR) challenge and focus on bench-marking deep face recognition methods under the existence of facial masks. In the MFR challenge, there are two main tracks: the InsightFace track and the WebFace260M track. For the InsightFace track, we manually collect a large-scale masked face test set with 7K identities. In addition, we also collect a children test set including 14K identities and a multi-racial test set containing 242K identities. By using these three test sets, we build up an online model testing system, which can give a comprehensive evaluation of face recognition models. To avoid data privacy problems, no test image is released to the public. As the challenge is still under-going, we will keep on updating the top-ranked solutions as well as this report on the arxiv.
Restats: A Test Coverage Tool for RESTful APIs
Venue: arXiv cs.SE 2021
Year: 2021

Test coverage is a standard measure used to evaluate the completeness of a test suite. Coverage is typically computed on source code, by assessing the extent of source code entities (e.g., statements, data dependencies, control dependencies) that are exercised when running test cases. When considering REST APIs, an alternative perspective to assess test suite completeness is with respect to the service definition. This paper presents Restats, a test coverage tool for REST APIs that supports eight state-of-the-art test coverage metrics with a black-box perspective, i.e., only relying on the OpenAPI interface specification of the REST API under test. In fact, metrics are computed by only observing the HTTP requests and responses occurring at testing time, and no access to source/compiled code of the REST API is required. These coverage metrics come in handy for: (i) developers and test engineers working at development and maintenance tasks; (ii) stakeholders and customers who want to evaluate the completeness of acceptance tests; (iii) researches interested in comparing different automated test case generation strategies.
Transformers predicting the future. Applying attention in next-frame and time series forecasting
Venue: arXiv cs.LG 2021
Year: 2021

Recurrent Neural Networks were, until recently, one of the best ways to capture the timely dependencies in sequences. However, with the introduction of the Transformer, it has been proven that an architecture with only attention-mechanisms without any RNN can improve on the results in various sequence processing tasks (e.g. NLP). Multiple studies since then have shown that similar approaches can be applied for images, point clouds, video, audio or time series forecasting. Furthermore, solutions such as the Perceiver or the Informer have been introduced to expand on the applicability of the Transformer. Our main objective is testing and evaluating the effectiveness of applying Transformer-like models on time series data, tackling susceptibility to anomalies, context awareness and space complexity by fine-tuning the hyperparameters, preprocessing the data, applying dimensionality reduction or convolutional encodings, etc. We are also looking at the problem of next-frame prediction and exploring ways to modify existing solutions in order to achieve higher performance and learn generalized knowledge.
Non-uniform quantization with linear average-case computation time
Venue: arXiv cs.DS 2021
Year: 2021

A new method for binning a set of $n$ data values into a set of m bins for the case where the bins are of different sizes is proposed. The method skips binning using a binary search across the bins all the time. It is proven the method exhibits a linear average-case computation time. The experiments' results show a speedup factor of over four compared to binning by binary search alone for data values with unknown distributions. This result is consistent with the analysis of the method.
Deep Natural Language Processing for LinkedIn Search Systems
Venue: arXiv cs.CL 2021
Year: 2021

Many search systems work with large amounts of natural language data, e.g., search queries, user profiles and documents, where deep learning based natural language processing techniques (deep NLP) can be of great help. In this paper, we introduce a comprehensive study of applying deep NLP techniques to five representative tasks in search engines. Through the model design and experiments of the five tasks, readers can find answers to three important questions: (1) When is deep NLP helpful/not helpful in search systems? (2) How to address latency challenges? (3) How to ensure model robustness? This work builds on existing efforts of LinkedIn search, and is tested at scale on a commercial search engine. We believe our experiences can provide useful insights for the industry and research communities.
User configurable 3D object regeneration for spatial privacy
Venue: arXiv cs.CR 2021
Year: 2021

Environmental understanding capability of $\textit{augmented}$ (AR) and $\textit{mixed reality}$ (MR) devices are continuously improving through advances in sensing, computer vision, and machine learning. Various AR/MR applications demonstrate such capabilities i.e. scanning a space using a handheld or head mounted device and capturing a digital representation of the space that are accurate copies of the real space. However, these capabilities impose privacy risks to users: personally identifiable information can leak from captured 3D maps of the sensitive spaces and/or captured sensitive objects within the mapped space. Thus, in this work, we demonstrate how we can leverage 3D object regeneration for preserving privacy of 3D point clouds. That is, we employ an intermediary layer of protection to transform the 3D point cloud before providing it to the third-party applications. Specifically, we use an existing adversarial autoencoder to generate copies of 3D objects where the likeness of the copies from the original can be varied. To test the viability and performance of this method as a privacy preserving mechanism, we use a 3D classifier to classify and identify these transformed point clouds i.e. perform $\textit{super}$-class and $\textit{intra}$-class classification. To measure the performance of the proposed privacy framework, we define privacy, $Π\in[0,1]$, and utility metrics, $Q\in[0,1]$, which are desired to be maximized. Experimental evaluation shows that the privacy framework can indeed variably effect the privacy of a 3D object by varying the privilege level $l\in[0,1]$ i.e. if a low $l<0.17$ is maintained, $Π_1,Π_2>0.4$ is ensured where $Π_1,Π_2$ are super- and intra-class privacy. Lastly, the privacy framework can ensure relatively high intra-class privacy and utility i.e. $Π_2>0.63$ and $Q>0.70$, if the privilege level is kept within the range of $0.17<l<0.25$.
OACAL: Finding Module-consistent Specifications to Secure Systems from Weakened User Obligations
Venue: arXiv cs.CR 2021
Year: 2021

Users interacting with a system through UI are typically obliged to perform their actions in a pre-determined order, to successfully achieve certain functional goals. However, such obligations are often not followed strictly by users, which may lead to the violation to security properties, especially in security-critical systems. To improve the security with the awareness of unexpected user behaviors, a system can be redesigned to a more robust one by changing the order of actions in its specification. Meanwhile, we anticipate that the functionalities would remain consistent following the modifications. In this paper, we propose an efficient algorithm to automatically produce specification revisions tackling the attack scenarios caused by weakened user obligations. By our algorithm, all the revisions would be generated to maintain the integrity of the functionalities using a novel recomposition approach. Then, the eligible revisions that can satisfy the security requirements would be efficiently spotted by a hybrid approach combining model checking and machine learning techniques. We evaluate our algorithm by comparing its performance with a state-of-the-art approach regarding their coverage and searching speed of the desirable revisions.
On computations with Double Schubert Automaton and stable maps of Multivariate Cryptography
Venue: arXiv cs.CR 2021
Year: 2021

The families of bijective transformations $G_n$ of affine space $K^n$ over general commutative ring $K$ of increasing order with the property of stability will be constructed. Stability means that maximal degree of elements of cyclic subgroup generated by the transformation of degree $d$ is bounded by $d$. In the case $K=F_q$ these transformations of $K^n$ can be of an exponential order. We introduce large groups formed by quadratic transformations and numerical encryption algorithm protected by secure protocol of Noncommutative Cryptography. The construction of transformations is presented in terms of walks on Double Schubert Graphs.
GSVMA: A Genetic-Support Vector Machine-Anova method for CAD diagnosis based on Z-Alizadeh Sani dataset
Venue: arXiv cs.LG 2021
Year: 2021

Coronary heart disease (CAD) is one of the crucial reasons for cardiovascular mortality in middle-aged people worldwide. The most typical tool is angiography for diagnosing CAD. The challenges of CAD diagnosis using angiography are costly and have side effects. One of the alternative solutions is the use of machine learning-based patterns for CAD diagnosis. Hence, this paper provides a new hybrid machine learning model called Genetic Support Vector Machine and Analysis of Variance (GSVMA). The ANOVA is known as the kernel function for SVM. The proposed model is performed based on the Z-Alizadeh Sani dataset. A genetic optimization algorithm is used to select crucial features. In addition, SVM with Anova, Linear SVM, and LibSVM with radial basis function methods were applied to classify the dataset. As a result, the GSVMA hybrid method performs better than other methods. This proposed method has the highest accuracy of 89.45% through a 10-fold cross-validation technique with 35 selected features on the Z-Alizadeh Sani dataset. Therefore, the genetic optimization algorithm is very effective for improving accuracy. The computer-aided GSVMA method can be helped clinicians with CAD diagnosis.
Learning to Detect: A Data-driven Approach for Network Intrusion Detection
Venue: arXiv cs.CR 2021
Year: 2021

With massive data being generated daily and the ever-increasing interconnectivity of the world's Internet infrastructures, a machine learning based intrusion detection system (IDS) has become a vital component to protect our economic and national security. In this paper, we perform a comprehensive study on NSL-KDD, a network traffic dataset, by visualizing patterns and employing different learning-based models to detect cyber attacks. Unlike previous shallow learning and deep learning models that use the single learning model approach for intrusion detection, we adopt a hierarchy strategy, in which the intrusion and normal behavior are classified firstly, and then the specific types of attacks are classified. We demonstrate the advantage of the unsupervised representation learning model in binary intrusion detection tasks. Besides, we alleviate the data imbalance problem with SVM-SMOTE oversampling technique in 4-class classification and further demonstrate the effectiveness and the drawback of the oversampling mechanism with a deep neural network as a base model.
FeelsGoodMan: Inferring Semantics of Twitch Neologisms
Venue: arXiv cs.CL 2021
Year: 2021

Twitch chats pose a unique problem in natural language understanding due to a large presence of neologisms, specifically emotes. There are a total of 8.06 million emotes, over 400k of which were used in the week studied. There is virtually no information on the meaning or sentiment of emotes, and with a constant influx of new emotes and drift in their frequencies, it becomes impossible to maintain an updated manually-labeled dataset. Our paper makes a two fold contribution. First we establish a new baseline for sentiment analysis on Twitch data, outperforming the previous supervised benchmark by 7.9% points. Secondly, we introduce a simple but powerful unsupervised framework based on word embeddings and k-NN to enrich existing models with out-of-vocabulary knowledge. This framework allows us to auto-generate a pseudo-dictionary of emotes and we show that we can nearly match the supervised benchmark above even when injecting such emote knowledge into sentiment classifiers trained on extraneous datasets such as movie reviews or Twitter.
Cost-Efficient RIS-Aided Channel Estimation via Rank-One Matrix Factorization
Venue: arXiv cs.IT 2021
Year: 2021

A reconfigurable intelligent surface (RIS) consists of massive meta elements, which can improve the performance of future wireless communication systems. Existing RIS-aided channel estimation methods try to estimate the cascaded channel directly, incurring high computational and training overhead especially when the number of elements of RIS is extremely large. In this paper, we propose a cost-efficient channel estimation method via rank-one matrix factorization (MF). Specifically, if the RIS is employed near base station (BS), it is found that the RIS- aided channel can be factorized into a product of low-dimensional matrices. To estimate these factorized matrices, we propose alternating minimization and gradient descent approaches to obtain the near optimal solutions. Compared to directly estimating the cascaded channel, the proposed MF method reduces training overhead substantially. Finally, the numerical simulations show the effectiveness of the proposed MF method.
Svar: A Tiny C++ Header Brings Unified Interface for Multiple programming Languages
Venue: arXiv cs.PL 2021
Year: 2021

There are numerous types of programming languages developed in the last decades, and most of them provide interface to call C++ or C for high efficiency implementation. The motivation of Svar is to design an efficient, light-weighted and general middle-ware for multiple languages, meanwhile, brings the dynamism features from script language to C++ in a straightforward way. Firstly, a Svar class with JSON like data structure is designed to hold everything exists in C++, including basic values, functions or user defined classes and objects. Secondly, arguments are auto cast to and from Svar efficiently with compile time pointers, references and shared\_ptr detection. Thirdly, classes and functions are binded with string names to support reflection, this means all functions and classes in a shared library can be exported to a Svar object, which also calls a Svar module. The Svar modules can be accessed by different languages and this paper demonstrates how to import and use a Svar module in Python and Node.js. Moreover, the Svar modules or even a python module can also be imported by C++ at runtime, which makes C++ easier to compile and use since headers are not required anymore. We compare the performance of Svar with two state-of-the-art binding tool for Python and Node.js, and the result demonstrates that Svar is efficient, elegant and general. The core of this project is one single tiny modern C++ header with less than 5000 lines code without extra dependency. To help developers using Svar, all the source codes related are public available on http://github.com/zdzhaoyong/Svar, including documentations and benchmarks.
Decentralized Policy Information Points for Multi-Domain Environments
Venue: arXiv cs.CR 2021
Year: 2021

Access control models have been developed to control authorized access to sensitive resources. This control of access is important as there is now a need for collaborative resource sharing between multiple organizations over open environments like the internet. Although there are multiple access control models that are being widely used, these models are providing access control within a closed environment i.e. within the organization using it. These models have restricted capabilities in providing access control in open environments. Attribute-Based Access Control (ABAC) has emerged as a powerful access control model to bring fine-grained authorization to organizations that possess sensitive data and resources and want to collaborate over open environments. In an ABAC system, access to resources that an organization possess can be controlled by applying policies on attributes of the users. These policies are conditions that need to be satisfied by the requester in order to gain access to the resource. In this paper, we provide an introduction to ABAC and by carrying forward the architecture of ABAC, we propose a Decentralized Policy Information Point (PIP) model. Our model proposes the decentralization of PIP, which is an entity of the ABAC model that allows the storage and query of user attributes and enforces fine-grained access control for controlling the access of sensitive resources over multiple domains. Our model makes use of the concept of a cryptographic primitive called Attribute-Based Signature (ABS) to keep the identities of the users involved, private. Our model can be used for collaborative resource sharing over the internet. The evaluation of our model is also discussed to reflect the application of the proposed decentralized PIP model.
Novel Frameworks for Coded Caching via Cartesian Product with Reduced Subpacketization
Venue: arXiv cs.IT 2021
Year: 2021

Caching prefetches some library content at users' memories during the off-peak times (i.e., {\it placement phase}), such that the number of transmissions during the peak-traffic times (i.e., {\it delivery phase}) are reduced. A coded caching strategy was originally proposed by Maddah-Ali and Niesen (MN) leading to a multicasting gain compared to the conventional uncoded caching, where each message in the delivery phase is useful to multiple users simultaneously. However, the MN coded caching scheme suffers from the high subpacketization which makes it impractical. In order to reduce the subpacketization while retain the multicast opportunities in the delivery phase, Yan et al. proposed a combinatorial structure called placement delivery array (PDA) to design coded caching schemes. In this paper, we propose two novel frameworks for constructing PDA via Cartesian product, which constructs a PDA for $mK_1$ users by the $m$-fold Cartesian product of a PDA for $K_1$ users. By applying the proposed frameworks to some existing PDAs, three novel caching schemes are obtained which can significantly reduce the subpacketization of the MN scheme while slightly increasing the needed number of transmissions. For instance, for the third scheme which works for any number of users and any memory regime, while reducing the coded caching gain by one, the needed subpacketization is at most $O\left(\sqrt{\frac{K}{q}}2^{-\frac{K}{q}}\right)$ of that of the MN scheme, where $K$ is the number of users, $0<z/q<1$ is the memory ratio of each user, and $q,z$ are coprime.